archer

“Bring out your dead!”

No jokes about flatulence during gaming sessions making the aliens feel at home? The community has really dropped the ball on this one.

It also depends on how much personal experience you have with a subculture before you can accurately identify which behaviors are caricatures of reality and which are reality. If the OP would like a website to spend a few weeks researching typical behavior, I can give him a link.

I’m not used to 6e write-ups but my first impression was that the CON is a little low. I would like to ask about the “only while operating tech” limitations. Are you talking about only his suit? His suit plus cars, airplanes, drones and any Mecha he finds? His TV remote control, flashlight, smartphone, or video game? Not trying to be a smartass. I’m just thinking that’s a lot of combat related powers to be giving him if it activates off of trivial tech which is easily accessible from any random civilian. So I’m wondering where you see the boundaries of the power.

Falling down the stairs is a classic way to die. Slipping and hitting your head at the pool. Stumbling in front of traffic. Stumbling/falling is supposed to be the #1 cause of non-vehicle accidental deaths Car loses control on a wet road. Choking. As for the other, any super origin story could work for that. Solar eclipse Exposure to aliens Meteor Illness Swamp gas UFO Weird energy from a dimensional rift You deity shows and removes powers Anything you might have seen written up as a susceptibility on a character sheet like intense magnetic fields.

Laundry housekeeping food prep social event coordinator chaplain nurses and paramedics many specialist doctors might not be commissioned officers or even fleet technicians, repairmen, and mechanics (especially for damage control after a battle) science specialists for certain missions first contact specialists barber/stylist spies Children’s teachers Teachers for continuing education for adults. It could be cross-training in other aspects of starship operation. Or it could be pottery, painting, history, or anything else a college might offer. There’s a limited number of places to go inside a starship and a limited number of people to interact with. Keeping people busy in their off hours would be a challenge on long missions.

Social complications of paranoia, distrust of government, gullible to conspiracy theories, and ethnic biases were very common in my experience and caused me to quit going to prepper forums. Having tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition for each caliber of gun that is owned was common. Having a stash of food sufficient for several years and the ability to produce more food was common. Everyone has a bug out bag at home for each member of the family. Basically it’s a backpack containing some combination of such things as a fire kit, knife, flashlight, medical supplies, food and water for a day or two, water purification, change of clothes, hygiene kit, map, compass, fishing kit, handgun, paracord, multitool, sewing kit, duct tape, sun block, insect repellent, cell phone charger, cash. Some people keep an additional bag in their car in case the emergency they’re preparing for happens while away from home. As for the package, maybe something like: WF: small arms Gunsmith or WF with something like knife or bow survival KS: backpacking, navigation, camping or something similar with an outdoor theme Paramedic choice of Farming, fishing, hunting, trapping, canning food or something else with a gathering food theme Most preppers try to have a bug out location in addition to their urban home, which would be a base. But I don’t recall ever seeing a base as part of a package deal. It’s also common to have a vehicle which can handle rough terrain because in a bug out situation, there’ll be traffic jams and you might be driving through yards and golf courses and through hedges and chain link fences trying to avoid slow downs and looters.

So you’re trying to tell me that his “womanizer” power DOESN’T actually change someone into a woman???

That sounds painful. But it reminds me of a campaign where we would have the mage change clothing with the cleric. The “cleric” would offer to cast a “blessing” on a dim-witted or gullible NPC, with the blessing usually being some sort of charm/mind control. (Gullible people wouldn’t pick up on what was happening as they’d be on their knees with their eyes closed.) Then we’d parlay that NPC into access to some place, person, or job which we wouldn’t otherwise have had.

Maybe add PS: Singing as well. Then your weapon can work for tips by performing musicals in every tavern you visit. A singing and dancing sword has got to have more “wow” factor for an audience than just a dancing sword.

If it is in Humboldt County, maybe just replace the small college town of Arcata with a larger Coastal City? You’d have to add a river emptying into Humboldt Bay, I think, but a lot of what you’re going for is there already. Maybe some sports rivalries with college, high school, and minor league baseball teams in Eureka and a little resentment that Eureka is still the county seat long after Coastal City has dwarfed it. Or you could just ignore Eureka, Arcata, and the name “Humboldt Bay” and plop down Coastal City in its place. You’d avoid having to deal with the real world and having people tell you that you got some details wrong. In any case, think adding an older nuclear power plant to the city would add some interesting tension, considering the overwhelming majority of Democrats and the huge amount of environmental activism in the area today.

Offhand, multiform appeals to me. You can change forms when you have the focus and cannot when Foxbat is running off down the street with it. But I’ll try to give it more thought.

For the healing ability, the damage to yourself sounds like a Side Effect. But I don’t remember if Side Effects are in 5th edition. I only ever used side effects in lengthy rituals and then the effect being a Flash or a STR/EGO/ED etc. Drain which wouldn’t cripple my ability to move. Being blinded, deafened, weakened, or more open to damaging outside energies always seemed thematically appropriate “payment” for conducting magic rituals.

You need a partner for many dance moves. A partner could be another dancing weapon or a person who just grabs the weapon to be “in hold”. Obviously, holding both ends of a dancing staff would be easier than holding both ends of a dancing sword. And I don’t even want to think about the complications of a partner mounting and dismounting during lifts for a dancing sword. I think the topic is more the capability to dance than to have an opportunity to do some particular dance move. Professional dancers are still professional dancers even when they don’t have a partner or when they aren’t dancing at all.

I’d do a dancing sword something like this: PS: Tap Dancing PS: Ballroom Dancing PS: Latin Dancing PS: Folk Dancing Flight 3” (Only up to 6 feet high) An embedded “Computer” enchantment so it knows when to start and stop, plus where it has room to dance (some dances like the tango and quick step require a lot of room). If you want it to dance to musical accompaniment, some GM’s might make you buy normal hearing for it but I’d throw that in for free. YMMV Come to think of it, you could buy it as a vehicle since many dances require that you pick up and move your partner.

NP, it’s been 16 years since I’ve been in a 727 simulator.

He’d get them out very carefully?

No offense but you might want to look up what an altimeter does....

Honestly, if my GM put those guns into a scenario, I’d look into blowing up the gangbangers’ homes at night while not in my normal costumed identity. Or I’d roleplay moving to another city until someone else took out the bad guys. Your players must trust you A LOT. Glad the heroes survived. Lucky the heroes survived.

Normal eyesight for its security system while on the ground, at a minimum. Otherwise, you’re just asking for trouble with people sabotaging the plane unnoticed every time the team goes into the field. And I want the craft to recognize it’s me coming back even if I’ve had my arm blown off (which, call me paranoid, I’m not confident could happen with radar senses.) 360 degree radar Telescopic vision so you can identify what the radar detected, see tail numbers, look at the landscape you’re flying over, etc. Night vision at a minimum. Since the plane by definition will be operating outdoors rather than underground, I think you could get away with no IR if you’re short on points (even though I like IR). Skill levels to reduce range penalties on sensor powers. A computer to monitor the sensors. Radio to contact air traffic control. Mind link to team members and the HQ’s computer for secure communications. Absolute Range Sense makes sense as an altimeter. (Maybe a limitation that it may only be used as an altimeter?) Absolute Time Sense and Bump of Direction so the craft can detect when and where it is. Eidetic memory for sensor records and for loaded memory like world maps, airport layouts and locations, etc. which would come in handy for operating an aircraft. I’m not a fan of giving aircraft abilities in hearing. I know it’s possible to buy with points but I can’t wrap my brain around a microphone hearing anything but wind when mounted on the outside of a flying plane. If you want to get fancy, you could detect air turbulence which might clue you in to unusual weather, flying villains, invisible flying villains, etc. If the craft operates in outer space, maybe detect faster than light travel to give some heads up on approaching spacecraft. (Yeah to make it useful at real FTL speeds such a power could be insanely expensive due to the distances involved under normal Champions rules. But a craft having that ability is common in sci-fi settings so I’d just GM rule that the ability works and not worry that it detected something that was 898,263 miles away just a second ago.)

Outside of doing rewrites of existing agencies, I’d like to see a private for-profit agency which looks for applications of superpowers for real world purposes. Then the agency goes out and recruits the super for the job whether the super was a hero or villain. I had an agency called S.P.I.R.E. (Super Powers Investgative Research Enterprises) which did that. For example, they might find a religious organization which was wanting to build a temple on a mountaintop then find a super who could carry 50 ton blocks of stone up a mountainside and bring them together. Or bring together people who can work easily underwater with groups doing underwater research. Or bring together supers who access inter-dimensional energy with programs looking at such energies. In my campaign, SPIRE would contact villains while in prison and assess their suitability for employment. Then show up at parole hearings for some of them to testify on behalf of the convict and promise him immediate employment if released immediately. Or in a few situations, actually provide legal help to the prisoner. It’d tick off the heroes who mostly wanted villains to stay in jail. But some villains actually reformed. And other villains who weren’t actively being hunted by the police at that point in time would contact SPIRE first when they needed money rather than starting a crime spree. And SPIRE offered career and emotional counseling for any super regardless of ability to pay or whether the super agreed to work for SPIRE or not. For a villains book, the ultimate goal of the organization would have to change, of course. In addition to all its legitimate activity, It would be falsely testifying at parole hearings in order to get unrepentant villains released. Perhaps it also secretly helps recruit supers for illegal activities Perhaps its counseling services tries to identity psychological weaknesses, uncover secret identities, etc. Perhaps it offers free medical services or otherwise tries to collect supers’ DNA for their own use or for sale. There’s a lot of possibilities for an organization which cultivated an image of respectability and which has extensive contact with supers on both sides of the law.

Fortress, the womanizing, size-shifting brick? Is the womanizing power written up as a ranged transform? Or does he have to touch the victim?

If you are looking for easy fixes, the simplest way to deal with it in a campaign seems to me to add 8 years to whatever dates are used in the official timeline. Or you could have the setting be eight years in the past. Honestly, I don’t think most people would notice. Your campaign world is going to vary from the official timeline as soon as you get started anyway so I don’t see a need to be slavishly devoted to a timeline if the details of it aren’t easily available.